October 13, 2017

Dear NJGCA Member:

Thank you for reading this week's NJGCA Road Warrior!

Here is what you will find in this edition:

NJGCA-UTICA PROGRAM RETURNS 10% DIVIDEND TO MEMBERS
NJ’S GUBERNATORIAL ELECTION IN LESS THAN FOUR WEEKS
TOBACCO PURCHASE AGE INCREASES TO 21 ON NOVEMBER 1, 2017

Good news for NJGCA members participating in the UTICA liability insurance program! We just learned that the NJGCA-UTICA program will be sending dividend checks to all members in the exclusive program. The payments you will receive represent 10% of the premiums you paid in the last year. I don’t have all of the details yet, as I was just informed, but I wanted to let you know because this is very good news! I will share more details as they become available. If you are not in this program, you should be! You are leaving money on the table! This program is handled by one of our trusted MBPs, the Amato Agency. Please call the office if you would like to get more information.

With the NJ Gubernatorial Election less than 4 weeks away, polls show that Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno has narrowed the gap between herself and frontrunner Democrat candidate Phil Murphy to less than 10 points. Many who follow NJ politics closely have not given the Lieutenant Governor much of a chance to win this election (for various reasons) one of which is the extreme unpopularity and negative image of current governor Chris Christie. Generally, voters link Guadagno to Christie, creating a negative association for her as well. However, we're finding that for those who are open minded and have either met Kim Guadagno or listened to her, they come to like her very much and will vote for her. There are several issues very important to you, which hinge on the result of the election, including $15/hour minimum wage. Democrat Phil Murphy is campaigning vigorously on the promise of supporting a $15/hr minimum wage if he becomes Governor. The first debate between the candidates took place this week, and it certainly highlights the differences between the two candidates and how their positions on taxes and employee issues will affect your business. For anyone who didn’t watch, here is a link that you can click on to view the entire 1 hour debate

There are also 40 Legislative districts in NJ -- a total of 120 seats in the State Capitol -- up for election, and we are monitoring all of them. We are finding that many legislators who have been supportive of NJGCA in the past and oppose things like $15/hr minimum wage, are struggling in their campaigns. Many are Republicans who are also linked to, and hurt by, negative feelings that New Jerseyans have towards Republican Governor Chris Christie. Our annual Voter Guide issue of the On The Road newsletter should be in your mailboxes in the next two weeks. I hope you will study it to see and learn how your legislators have responded to our questionnaire and have voted in the previous legislative session.

Finally, I want to remind all of you with convenience stores that the age to purchase tobacco products in New Jersey will change on November 1, 2017 from 19 years old to 21 years old. Although we did expect that this would become the law eventually, most likely after a new Governor was sworn in, it was signed into law at the end of July by Governor Christie. He managed to surprise everyone, including the Democrats who have been pushing this for the last few years, as we were confident he would veto this legislation as he has done before, and leave it for the incoming Governor next year to deal with. Regardless of the surprise, you must all change your signage and comply with the new age of 21. I'm sure there will be undercover sting operations looking to snag a store owner who sells tobacco to an underage consumer. It is just not worth it. You could lose your license.

Thanks for reading -- See you next week!

Sal Risalvato
Executive Director

NEWS AROUND THE STATE: THE NEWS YOU SHOULD KNOW

10/12/2017:
Cook County, Illinois Overturns Beverage Tax
On Oct 11, the Cook County Board officially repealed the controversial city beverage tax. “The repeal was a foregone conclusion after the board’s Finance Committee voted 15-2 on Tuesday, signaling the pop tax would be scrapped after just four months.” Repeal of the Cook County Sweetened Beverage Tax will take effect on Dec. 1, 2017. The voice vote came despite Board President Toni Preckwinkle saying that the $200 million she expected the county to collect from the penny-per-ounce beverage tax was necessary to avoid 11% across-the-board cuts. The 15-2 vote reportedly makes the repeal veto-proof. The fight to repeal the county’s beverage tax comes after strong support from former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg to keep the tax, and the American Beverage Association (ABA) and the retail community fighting to get rid of the regressive tax. "We see this as a momentum swing," Lauren Kane, a spokeswoman for ABA, told Politico. "People are just saying we want the government to find other ways to pay for their priorities rather than taxing working people."

10/12/2017:
Trump Tax Policy Could Be Tough on Mom-and-Pop Shops, Main Street
The Trump admin. plan to rewrite federal tax policy has faced widespread criticism in NJ, due to the proposed elimination of a key tax deduction that helps offset local property taxes. But now advocates for small-business owners are also questioning the proposals, saying they could end up hurting many of the state’s mom-and-pop stores. Trump has been pitching his plan to overhaul the federal tax code as a boost for the middle class and small businesses. A key change relating to small-business owners is a proposal to create a new tax rate for so-called pass-through businesses, which is a category that many small businesses fall under. The owners of a pass-through business don’t pay corporate taxes, but instead are taxed under the individual or personal-income tax rates. Right now, small-business owners can face federal personal-income tax rates as high as 39.6%, but Trump is seeking to create a pass-through rate that would be set at 25%.

10/11/2017:
Tobacco 21 Is a Catch-22
Catch-22 is a difficult situation caused by mutually conflicting or seemingly contradictory conditions. Raising the legal age to purchase tobacco products is not only a catch-22 but allows the “social sources” problem to perpetuate itself. One of the main issues about raising the legal age to 21 centers on whether to also make it illegal for 18, 19 and 20-year-olds to possess and use tobacco products in addition to prohibiting the sale to these young adults. Those anti-tobacco advocates who are proposing to raise the legal purchase age to 21 claim that there will be a health benefit because 18, 19 and 20-year-olds would not use tobacco products nor serve as a social source (someone willing to be a supplier of tobacco products) for underage youth. But if 18, 19 and 20-year-old adults are not prohibited from possessing and using tobacco products, these adults will simply drive to a neighboring or nearby city or town, purchase their preferred tobacco products, and then legally possess and use them in their hometown. This also means that adults can continue to be a social source of tobacco for minors. In other words, the public-health benefit claimed will be marginal to nonexistent, but local retailers would suffer the financial loss of tobacco sales to legal-age adults along with reduced gasoline, snack and beverage sales when these adults drive to nearby towns to patronize other retailers.

10/11/2017:
What's Behind Amoco’s Return?
More than a decade after the Amoco fuel brand disappeared from the US, it appears the timing is right for its return. This week, BP announced plans to reintroduce the Amoco fuel brand to the US in select markets. The 105-year-old fuel brand last appeared on US street corners around 2000, after reaching more than 9,000 sites. Following its 1998 merger with Amoco, BP retired the Amoco brand and instead moved forward with BP as its national fuel brand. Two decades later, Amoco is back with a fresh image and the potential for a new chapter of growth. “To me, new to BP, it was an obvious question to ask: Why not Amoco to help our BP-branded jobbers grow in the market?” said Rick Altizer, who joined Houston-based BP as senior VP of fuel sales and marketing for North America in January. He also is the former head of retail marketing for Shell Oil Co. As Altizer explained, while BP’s brand is strong and customers loyal, its marketers wanted more growth opportunities for certain market situations in which the BP fuel brand -- now at 6,200 locations in the US -- did not make sense. “The marketplace is so crowded and competitive; there are lots of situations where we’d like to grow with our customers and there’d already be conflict sites across the corner, around the bend,” said Altizer. For example, say a customer has two BP-branded sites and wants to convert a third, nearby location from a competing brand and continue to grow with BP. “This just gives us a way to penetrate those very concentrated and crowded marketplaces, in this case with BP’s Amoco,” said Altizer.

10/11/2017:
The Top Legislative Threats Facing Convenience Stores Today
Selling fuels alone brings up a host of governmental issues for convenience stores, but when you add expanding foodservice, payments, security and labor to the mix, there are a lot of legislative issues to be monitored and adhered to for today’s c-store retailers. The majority of these issues fall into four major buckets:

Fuels — How and what is being sold, and how it’s taxed and labeled.
Foodservice — Includes food safety, menu labeling, SNAP benefits and more.
Payments and Security — Includes credit and debit issues, fees, data security and compliance, and EMV transactions.
Other — includes labor, corporate taxes and healthcare.

NACS, the Association for Convenience & Fuel Retailing, is extremely active on all fronts when it comes to monitoring these issues and lobbying on behalf of all c-stores. The association also counts on the support of retailers to take action when necessary. “We could not have won the battle on the Durbin Amendment and debit/credit fees if it hadn’t been for the huge outpouring of grassroots support from our retailers,” Paige Anderson, director of government relations at NACS, told Convenience Store News. NACS sends out Action Alerts when it needs help from the retailer community, along with keeping an up-to-date tab on legislative issues on its website. “We’ve created a great online system where it just takes three clicks for retailers to contact their member of Congress on an issue,” Anderson noted. For more on each of the four areas, click the link above.

10/10/2017:
Another Regional Initiative, This One for Zero-Emission Vehicles
Under the Christie admin, NJ shunned regional collaborations with neighboring states to fight climate change, but that probably won't be the case next year. Lawmakers and others are pushing to re-enter a regional initiative to curb carbon pollution from power plants, and urging New Jersey to join an eight-state effort in the Northeast to bolster sale of zero-emission vehicles. With the transportation sector the largest single source of greenhouse-gas emissions, clean-energy advocates say it is imperative that states step up efforts to promote much more widespread use of electric and other zero-emission vehicles. The four-year-old effort, known as the Multi-State ZEV Task Force, is working to achieve a collective target of having at least 3.3 million zero-emission vehicles on the road in the eight-state region by 2025. Most of those states, like NJ, have established aggressive targets to reduce emissions contributing to global warming in the coming decades. In NJ, state law requires an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas levels from 1990 levels by 2050. “We are not going to achieve those goals unless we get pretty significant reductions from the transportation sector,’’ said Kathy Kinsey, a senior policy advisor at NESCAUM (Northeast States Coordinated Air Use Management), which provides technical assistance to the multistate task force.

10/09/2017:
Legislation for Year-round High Ethanol Blends Stalls
Legislation to allow year-round sales of higher ethanol blends won't move through the US Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee this year, after it attracted amendments targetting major environmental laws. Committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-WY) and Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE), co-authors of S. 517, told the news source that their bill lacked the votes necessary to move out of committee and onto the Senate floor. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), who opposed the bill, said it would have weakened the Clean Air Act, while other senators expressed concern about the legislation and industry sources said Democrats had a string of their own plans to try to address concerns about higher food prices and increased air pollution. The combined weight of the amendments under discussion ultimately sunk the bill. "The original sponsor said the votes aren't there; I don't expect to see it this year," Barrasso said. Fischer agreed that the bill would not come up for a vote this year. Ethanol producers have long argued that allowing year-round sale of gasoline with 15% ethanol would help increase the number of credits that refiners must use to comply with the Renewable Fuel Standard — and ultimately drive down prices. But the oil industry sees the RFS as "broken," and major producers have no interest in small tweaks, especially one that would cut into the sale of their product.

MEMBER BENEFIT PARTNER MESSAGE BOARD:

TMP Energy Solutions

Another Way to Save on Your Energy Bills

We have had a number of NJGCA members successfully reduce their rate per kWh signing up through our energy saving program. We know it's difficult to collect 12 months worth of previous electric bills to get an "accurate" analysis when comparing a variable rate to a fixed rate, but we now have another option available.

This new solution is a power purchase option; the other program is still in full force and has saved members thousands of dollars. If you sign up for the power purchase option, you will be grouped with other NJGCA members until the minimum kW demand is acquired. By pooling the member's usage together, you will be able to take advantage, as large energy users do, and receive a lower kWh rate.

Each member will receive their own contract. Each member is responsible to sign and return the agreement the day it is received in order to secure the price for their group.

Please do your due diligence, so when you receive the proposal and the agreement you will be able to make an intelligent decision.

If by chance, you still want us to assess you bills, to give you a price to compare, we will require 12 months of your most recent utility bills.

There are no bills required, but we would still like to have one bill per meter on file to check account #'s, meter #'s service addresses and other pertinent information incase there is a problem.

The term of the agreement is for 12 months. During this term period, you will have price protection against any energy price increases along with a low fixed kWh rate.

If you are interested in becoming part of this power purchase option, please contact Greg Cannon at the NJGCA.

Remember when you sign up your energy through the NJGCA Energy Program, TMP makes a considerable donation to the NJGCA Scholarship Fund through their proceeds. This has no affect on your rate, and costs you nothing out of pocket.

We hope to help hundreds of NJGCA members reduce their utility costs by participating in this and our other cost reduction programs. Our purpose, in the endeavor, is to help NJGCA members lower their energy costs while supporting the NJGCA Scholarship Fund.

Contact GREG CANNON at 732-256-9646 or email Greg at greg@njgca.org. Mention that you are interested in saving money on your energy bills. NJGCA & TMP Energy Solutions will handle all the rest.

POLITICAL PARTICIPATON: THE NJGCA PAC

DEFENDING OUR MEMBERS.
PROTECTING YOUR INTERESTS.
ANSWER THE CALL & CONTRIBUTE TODAY!!

Promoting our agenda in Trenton is of utmost importance to NJGCA and our members.

However, in order to truly affect the debate, we must ensure our friends in the Legislature are re-elected. It is for this reason that your Association has established the NJGCA PAC.

For too long, the weight of funding our Political Action Committee, the arm of the Association responsible for political donations, has rested upon a few. This is not only unfair to those few members who have shouldered this burden, but means we are not utilizing our full strength to affect the debate in Trenton.

To truly understand the importance of supporting our allies, consider our successes in Trenton:

We defeated BELOW COST SELLING
We made history in getting FIRST RIGHT OF REFUSAL signed into law!
We have built large support for RIGHT TO REPAIR and got it passed out of the Assembly
We defended your small business against the false accusations of Attorney General Anne Milgram
We gained wide support to move New Jersey to an all PIF Inspection System and close the CIF lanes
...and MUCH MORE!!

In each instance, we achieved these goals with the help of our friends in the Legislature!

If every member contributes just $100.00 we will be able to provide the help necessary to ensure victory for our allies.

PLEASE SEND YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS TO:
NJGCA PAC
4900 Route 33 West, Suite 100
Wall Township, NJ 07753
Please make your donation payable to NJGCA PAC

I understand that times are tough for all NJGCA members, but this is just as important as any battle we have fought in the past.

We have made great progress in Trenton. I hope that you will answer the call.

*NEW* Energy Information Agency Weekly Retail Gasoline Prices

Each week, the Energy Information Administration publishes a list of average gasoline prices for the previous three weeks. NJGCA will begin including this list with the Weekly Road Warrior. Remember, these prices are reflective of self-serve everywhere except NJ.